How do you read?

What a strange question it is. How does a person read?. Well, he takes a book or magazine and reads it. That’s it.

I developed a passion for reading at a very early age. Well, to be honest and precise , at a very very early age. I think I was only around 5 years of age when I started reading magazines, novels and digests (in my native language). Since my teens, there is hardly a day when I did not read something. However, most of it was fiction or novels. I turned to serious reading in late teens and early twenties. In my late twenties, I realized that I have developed a great habit of reading, but at the same time, an extremely poor style of reading; I read everything as fiction. I would read everything like a novel, without understanding the deep concepts, noting pearls of wisdom, asking questions, challenging ideas or absorbing the new themes. I realized that I was not getting much from my reading and felt the need to improve my reading style / approach. Since then, I have gradually developed some reading habits that have massively improved my gains from reading. I am sharing these with you so that you can also improve your gains from reading. Here are these:

1. While reading non-fiction books, articles etc, I extensively use pencil. Initially, I used yellow highlighter, but soon realized that it was difficult to use (remove and put on cap before/after every use) and had limited capability to grade texts of different importance. Also, ink of highlighters fades after some time (Yes, I do keep books that long …..).

a. I side line everything important or interesting (worth reading again).

b. I underline everything that is more important. The underlined portion is normally about 20-40% of sidelined portion.

c. Very very important concepts/parts of book are underlined as well as have 1-3 stars on the side.

d. To improve my vocabulary, I put a small dash-line along the line that carries the word. Once or twice a week, I write the sentence along with the meaning of the word in a separate note book and rub off the dash-line.

e. I give every book/article marks out of 100. The marks reflect the importance and usefulness of the book and help me to make selection for re-reading. It normally takes me only 20% of the time compared to first time reading to re-read a book to refresh all the concepts/ideas that I gained from the book. I am very selective in buying non-fiction books and all such books in my library are worth re-reading.

f. I list the books and articles read in two excel files, indicating title, author, time of last reading, marks out of hundred, whether I have hardcopy (for articles) etc. This helps me selecting my re-read material.

None of these reading habits is a rocket science. These all are common sense. But it took me years to find deficiencies in my reading habits and gradually develop habits to have massive gains from my reading. You must also be having some reading practices. Analyse these. Are you getting maximum out of your reading. If not, develop above mentioned reading habits. A 30 days conscious effort to implement these reading habits will put these on auto pilot and yield dividends for rest of your life.